How to Use Google Alerts to Monitor Your Company's Online Presence

Google offers a free service called "Google Alerts" that marketing professionals can use to monitor the presence of their company online. The services emails you when new web pages are published that are relevant to the search you enter for the alert. It will not catch every single new web page, but it does catch a lot of them, especially the ones from better known websites. For a huge company with a global brand, this service might not work well, since there is probably a lot of content created using your company or brand name. But for a smaller company with fewer mentions or coverage, it works great.

How to Use Google Alerts for Marketing

Visit Google Alerts and Complete the Form. At http://www.google.com/alerts there is a simple form you can fill out to get alerts emailed to you about new results for different search terms. Start by putting in your company name, selecting "Comprehensive", "as-it-happens" and your email.

Confirm Your Email. Google will send an email to the address you used for the alert. Click on the link in the email to confirm you want the alert.

Repeat for More Alerts. You can repeat this process to set up additional alerts. See below for some ideas for different alerts to set up.

Create a Google Account to Manage Your Alerts. This step is optional, but recommended. By creating a Google Account you can see all of your alerts on one screen, and can add more alerts, edit your alerts or delete them easily.

Now that you know how to set it up, here are some tips to use Google Alerts like an Expert.

Tips and Tricks to Use Google Alerts Like an Expert

Track Your Company. I have a Google Alert running for "HubSpot" so I know when new content is published about our company. You should too.

Track Your Products. I have alerts set up for "Website Grader" and "Press Release Grader". This is a good way to stay informed about how many bloggers are writing about HubSpot's products. If you have products with different names than your company, set up alerts for them too.

Track Your Executives. I have alerts set up for "Brian Halligan" and "Dharmesh Shah", so I can keep tabs on blogs and news articles that mention the HubSpot co-founders. You can do the same for your executives.

Use Phrase Search. If your company, products of executives have more than one word names, you should use phrase search in the alert - just put quotes around the search term and Google will only match on the phrase. For instance, an alert for "Website Grader" works better with quotes, because without the quotes it would pick up an article with the line "websites built by fifth graders", for instance.

Use Negative Keywords. Google Alerts will actually track new results for any search terms, including advanced terms. For instance, there is a political blogger named Mike Volpe, and to keep my email from getting cluttered with results that are about him and not me, I use the search "mike volpe -proprietornation" as an alert (the other Volpe's blog is called proprietornation, so using the negative search term excludes almost all of the results about the other Mike Volpe from my alert).

Mike, I think you hinted at one more item that should be on the list. Track yourself. It isn't vanity any longer to google yourself, you should keep tabs on what's being said about you and where your name is being dropped.

Using the quotes are very important to focus and zero in on what you actually want to track. I have been using alerts for years and it comes in very handy to see who is referencing our free "10 BEST REAL ESTATE MARKETS" report.

Using the quotes are very important to focus and zero in on what you actually want to track. I have been using alerts for years and it comes in very handy to see who is referencing our free "10 BEST REAL ESTATE MARKETS" report.

A great post about using Google alerts! I just posted the first part of a 2 part blog about online reputation management and highlighted using Google alerts. In my 2nd post I will definitely be referencing this article since it goes into much greater details.

I've been using Google alerts for more than a year after a tip from a friend of mine. Excellent tool to keep track of what gets mentioned about your company, your name, your team and your products. Great post!

I have used google alerts for six months or so. The question I have is what do they tell me? For instance, if I get an alert that links to one of my own blog articles that was written 30 days earlier, why does that come up? And if I get an alert of a link to a page of sponsored links upon which a competitor is listed, what does that tell me? I like google alerts, but I'd like to know more about what they mean.

i need some clarification of exactly what triggers a google alert. i have three theories. one, it's triggered when the alert terms appear in anything published. two, it's triggered when the alert terms appear in someone's search terms. three, it's triggered when the alert terms occur in a document which is a result for any search. or maybe it's something else. i get a confusing and contradictory impression from what i've read so far about it. i think that to get maximum effectiveness and quickest mastery of this tool one needs to know exactly what it is.

seo karachi

How does one's company info even get into Google's alert system? One of the board members emailed us (My 9-5 job) and said she had an alert (on herself) as board member but showed us as a "leisure" industry. I have no idea how to change that since we didn't submit anything ourselves. We're a not-for-profit and this is a major deal.

@Andrea - You should publish more (start a blog) and use inbound marketing to get into more Google alerts. Your question is a bit vague about the category, I will have someone contact you to get more info.